Starbreeze proud of Syndicate despite sales, reception

"A lost battle from the get-go."

Matt Maguire

Starbreeze CEO Mikael Nermark is proud of his studio’s reboot of Syndicate, even though the game sold poorly and wasn’t exactly embraced by fans of the franchise.

Turning the cult classic into a first-person shooter meant backlash was expected, but he was happy with the game – particularly the co-op – he said.

"To have the courage to reboot the franchise… We knew from the get-go that there was going to be a small but very vocal [group] of gamers and journalists that was going to hate us whatever route we took.

"If we didn't do an exact copy of the game, they'd hate us. If we did do an exact copy, they'd say we didn't innovate. They were never ours to win; it was a lost battle from the get-go,” said Nermark.

Recently, EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau said the game was "something we took a risk on”.

“It didn't work," he added.

Nermark was unfazed by the comments.

"I think both EA and Starbreeze can look back at it and say that we could have done stuff differently. If you ask anyone about any game in production they probably would say the same thing.

"In comparison to other triple-A teams, in terms of people and money, we're very small. I'm not going to tell you exactly what Syndicate cost to make - I can't due to NDAs - but it was substantially less than what the big in-house publishing studios would have spent, definitely."